Gugu Mbatha-Raw covers the latest issue of Porter Magazine (net-a-porter.com’s in-house magazine) to promote her role on the Loki series. While Gugu has known Tom Hiddleston since their drama school days, it doesn’t actually sound like Tom was the one who got her the part. It sounds like Marvel approached her about it and she jumped at the chance to work with her mate Tom Hiddleston. Gugu chats about superheroes, studio contracts, the importance of saying no to work you don’t believe in and a lot more. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
She’s walked away from superhero roles in the past. “There have been a few I’ve auditioned for and not got. And one or two [that] I got and turned down. Sometimes [the role] was so secretive, I was like, I’m not signing up to something where I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I wasn’t sure the character was going to have enough layers. Sometimes the tone of the piece just wasn’t to my taste: how the violence is depicted, how the women are represented. Those things are important to me.”
Why ‘Loki’ was appealing: “For a start, it was exciting that Kate Herron was directing all six episodes. Also, having been to drama school with Tom Hiddleston, there was a lovely circle of life about working on something together at this point.”
What Hiddleston was like at RADA: “He was blond. Sort of angelic. He seemed very…. centered is probably the best word”.
She doesn’t care for those multi-film contracts (which Marvel uses): “When you get down to the nitty-gritty of some of these contracts, they can be quite restrictive. You think, ‘Well, is that what I want my life to look like for the next seven years?’” Of course, she won’t comment on the time obligation for Loki or whether her character will return for future installments (everything in the Marvel universe is top secret, including details of the plot), except to say: “I am very comfortable with the commitment I have made.”
Freedom is priceless: “Sometimes I’ve made choices when I think that my agent might be like, ‘Oh!’ But you’ve got to. For me, there is no price on freedom or on your spirit. I don’t want to be doing something for years that is going to break me on a spiritual level that I don’t believe in. Sometimes, you have to take a leap of faith and follow your gut. And if your gut is saying, I feel trapped, you have to listen – otherwise you live with the consequences. That’s when people get cynical.”
[From Porter Magazine]
She talked a little bit about splitting her time between LA and England, depending on where the work is at the moment. I was curious, so I looked it up: she’s in the second season of The Morning Show, so that’s likely why she was in LA for much of 2020, when she wasn’t in Atlanta filming Loki. But she went back to England to film a movie/series with David Oyelowo and she sounded happy to be back home. As for saying “no” to those big contracts… like, I’ve heard so much about how so many Marvel actors feel so constricted and controlled by those oppressive five-picture or seven-picture contracts, especially when they’re not getting backends from the revenues. I don’t blame actors for walking away from those offers just for that reason. But it also seems like Gugu is leaning too hard into that, at least in this interview, like too much of her personality is wrapped up in “I say no to superhero movies all the time!” It’s humble-braggy.
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